1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of testing, provisioning, maintenance and management of a network system, device or a solution. More particularly, the invention relates to the generation of device response templates, so that during a test or communication with a device, a value associated with the device, or a network system can be extracted from the device response and used in later parts of the test or communication sequence.
2. Background and Description of the Related Art
In executing a test or a communication sequence, a device or a network system can respond with information that is useful for subsequent test or communication steps. Some of it is static in nature, such as its physical identification characteristics. Some of it is dynamic in nature, such as status information about processing results or configuration settings. It is desirable to use this information as input for later test steps, rather than having to manually query the device to update the test cases prior to execution. In order to capture this information, one must analyze device responses to selected commands. These results are not necessarily in a standard format. In the current art of testing, this requires one to either write specialized software to find the patterns in the returned data and transform it into useful variables, or to manually update test sequences. Neither one is a desirable result, as it prevents tests from being automated.
In the prior art, as illustrated in FIG. 1, one would manually step through a test sequence until reaching the desired step 101. he step would then be executed 102, and the resulting information captured on the users display 103. The user would then manually calculate the position of the data value in the response 104, and write customized code 105, which can then be inserted and integrated into a test script 106.
What is desired is an apparatus to enable a test engineer to generate information the test processor can use to recognize values it needs from command responses and to provide this information as specified for the test. These values can then be used in later test steps without having to rewrite the test every time a new device is introduced. Some of these values are known variables of the Device Under Test (DUT), while other values are based on device status and in fact might consist of a sequence of data, table of data, binary values, or encoded representation of the data.
The figures are provided in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. The figures should not be construed as limiting the breath of the invention in any manner.